Ashok Danavath and Praveen Kolluguri 
In mid-June, a Swiss court in Geneva canton sentenced four members of the Hinduja family to 4.5 years in jail, all of whom are Swiss citizens of Indian origin. They were found guilty of exploiting domestic workers brought to Geneva from India, by paying them only 220 to 400 Swiss Francs per month, less than 10% of average monthly wages for household caregivers in Geneva.
The family forced the underpaid employees to work 18-hour shifts without any days off, or additional compensation, and based their salaries on Indian job market standards. The domestic workers were paid in Indian currency every three to six months. Additionally, the Hinduja family restricted their movement in Geneva, let alone other areas of Switzerland, and confiscated their passports upon arrival. The convicts never even initiated the process of obtaining legal authorisation or permits for these workers who were brought in on short-term EU Schengen visas.
Prosecutor Yves Bertossa argued that the Hinduja family spent more on their dogs than on their workers. This news made global headlines, including in the Indian media. This case is not isolated. It reflects a broader pattern of exploitation linked to caste, class and gender.
The neoliberal world order exploits the labour of the caste-oppressed, a phenomenon expanding globally through easier immigration opportunities available to privileged Indians. As first-generation learners from oppressed castes, we want to highlight cases of such exploitation involving individuals of Indian and South Asian origins in the Indian diaspora as well as examine the reasons behind it and explain the links of this phenomenon to the anti-labour politics of right-wing politicians like Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman and Kamala Harris.
Cultural norms of work in India
Domestic caregiving in India is mostly taken up by women from caste-oppressed or adivasi backgrounds. Without contracts and protective provisions like (un)paid sick or maternity leave, this informal job leaves the workers vulnerable to exploitation. Families from the upper strata of society are largely reliant on the labour of these informal workers. Yet, the employers’ treatment of their domestic employees is often oppressive. It is common practice to not allow workers to sit on the furniture in the households they work in and to be given separate utensils for usage. They are also not allowed to use lifts in some gated developments and have separate entrances so they do not make these premises ‘impure or polluted’, which is rather ironic as they are the ones who keep them clean. In a way, these gated communities form the modern-day agraharas, that are exclusionary towards oppressed caste labourers.
These actions are rooted in the caste order where society is divided into graded hierarchies. People in the top three rungs are meant to do ‘pure’ work such as priestly duties, defence and business, whereas the lowest rung is occupied by Shudras who are left to do menial tasks. People outside this caste system are deemed untouchable and unseeable. The practice of prohibiting workers from using furniture, utensils and elevators is a modern-day manifestation of the same casteism.
This division of labour and labourers has meant that the comfort enjoyed by the dominant castes is often unchallenged and the exploitative nature of this practice is seen as a natural order of things in India and the subcontinent. People from the dominant castes feel entitled to exploitative labour. In many cases, this thinking is internalised by the labour themselves due to the systemic nature of this oppression.
At the moment there are no major mainstream social or political movements calling for the end of this exploitation or demanding corrective measures like minimum wage, sick pay, weekly mandatory holiday and maternity pay. It’s common for some households to have domestic workers, many of whom hail from rural areas. These workers often live with their employers and work around the clock, with the line between work and personal life being non-existent. They are constantly running around from morning to night, catering to the needs of their employers. This makes the lives of the people who benefit from their labour, consciously ignorant of the exploitative nature of the practice, very comfortable.
Also read: From Segregation to Labour, Manu’s Caste Law Governs the Indian Prison System
Violations overseas
When those who are used to these comforts start moving to other countries, they realise that it is rather cumbersome to manage these tasks with their own labour. People generally complain about how much they miss their domestic help, not because of their fondness for their workers but so that they can relax and benefit from leisure activities afforded from the exploitation of labour. Some people are so used to this that they start importing their staff. This, as we have seen, sometimes happens in compliance with local laws by exploiting loopholes or in flagrant violation of the law, as we have seen in the case of the Hindujas.
The employment and working conditions of domestic workers in India would be illegal if they were lifted and shifted to advanced labour markets like Europe and the US, where strict employment laws mandate minimum wages, regulated working hours, pensions, and sick and maternity pay. These benefits for employees have often been secured through collective action by trade unions.
However, there are certain restrictive visas like the Domestic Worker visa in the UK, which allow people to get their domestic help from abroad, while finding a way around worker protections available to native workers. Issued for only six months at a time, these visas prohibit renewal from within the country and restrict workers from changing employers, leaving them vulnerable, and without legal protection, if any issues arise. Another loophole that helps in bypassing the minimum wage is that employees can be given a lesser wage if the employer provides food and accommodation. This was the main argument used by the Hindujas, as well as Lakireddy Bali Reddy in the California human trafficking case.
Labour violations and human trafficking for cheap labour extend beyond domestic help in the Western market, contributing broader neoliberal exploitation. Poor labour laws fail to protect the interests of workers overseas. Due to various insecurities, lack of knowledge and hostile immigration laws, many workers do not seek legal support in foreign countries, which accelerates violations of their labour rights. This gives way to a free hand to conglomerates to exploit them. For instance, global restaurant chains like Saravana Bhavan – which started in Chennai and has expanded worldwide – faced multiple cases of wage violations and settled the case with 317 employees in California for not paying them minimum wage.
This issue is not confined to the hospitality industry. Even large corporations, celebrated for the “American Dream”, exploit workers. For example, the shipbuilding company Signal International trafficked labourers by promising employment, employer-provided housing, green cards to workers from India, only to force them to live in overcrowded conditions without job security, and held their passports. This case is one of the largest human trafficking incidents in U.S. history as per the lawsuit.
Religious institutions are also implicated in large-scale human trafficking cases. One notable case from the year 2000 involved an Indian religious charity Shri Vallabh Nidhi, which owns Shrico, the construction firm tasked with building a temple in Wembley, UK. It hired workers from Rajasthan who were paid £ 0.30 pence instead of the national minimum wage of £3.70 per hour, 90% less than the average UK salary at that time.
Almost 24 years later, this level of exploitation, particularly of marginalised, oppressed castes and lower classes, remains unchanged. The fear of hurting religious sentiments and powerful lobbying by caste-dominant overseas Indian communities often result in these cases not being perceived seriously. The aforementioned charity organisation engaged with then UK Home Office minister Paul Boateng to overcome immigration hurdles in bringing in the ‘slave-labourers’, possibly for electoral benefits, highlighting the connections between South Asian-origin dominant castes-classes and overseas governments. This allows them to bypass legislation meant to ensure fair wages.
In May 2021, a lawsuit against the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), a Hindu sect, revealed ongoing exploitation of labour from lower caste communities at a Hindu temple construction site in the US for over 15 years.
During the 1990s, Lakireddy Bali Reddy, a wealthy real estate investor who earned $1 million per month from his 1,000 rental properties in Berkeley and maintains influence in the current capital region of Andhra Pradesh, engaged in severe exploitation by trafficking Dalit girls into the United States for sexual slavery and forced labour.
This exploitation mirrored historical practices where agrarian workers were exploited by landlords like Reddy, Velama, Kamma, and other dominant caste groups spanning from pre to post-independence united Andhra Pradesh. Reflecting many years later in the so-called oldest capitalist democracy, Reddy leveraged caste dynamics, highlighting persistent caste-based oppression in North America more than three decades ago.
This exploitation reflects India’s social hierarchy and extends globally through diaspora communities. Despite the profound repercussions of these actions, mainstream Telugu media didn’t carry any detailed report about Reddy. This case also underscored the extent of human trafficking in California, which later passed an anti-human trafficking law in 2005. However, Reddy’s family settled with victims, and as a result, he received a relatively short sentence of just under 8 years in jail. Despite this, his family, involved in this case, continued their business expansion, solidifying their influence in California. Meanwhile, in Andhra Pradesh, his private engineering college celebrates him as a visionary, located just a few miles away from Amaravati, the proposed capital city of Andhra Pradesh.
Lack of solidarity within brown communities
There is a revival of right-wing ideology in the diaspora and prominent people from brown communities, such as Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, are the faces of inhumane right-wing rhetoric targeting the working class and other marginalised groups. This includes the now scrapped Rwanda Scheme in the UK, targeting migrant and refugees through hateful rhetoric and Islamophobia and backing anti-trade union and anti-protest laws. People who are not aware of the caste power dynamic might think this is rather odd coming from people with migrant backgrounds. However, once you look at this phenomenon from a caste-informed perspective, this lack of solidarity with the working class and the marginalised by the people of dominant castes is not a surprise but a natural extension of their role in the caste hierarchy. The rise of prominence of Indians in the right-wing parties is also due to their common interests of Islamophobia.
Renowned social activist Dr Anand Teltumbde, in his book Republic of Caste, has detailed the dominant castes’ aversion to Islam stemming from the fact that the Muslims in India are mainly from oppressed castes. Ultimately, addressing these challenges demands global awareness, solidarity across marginalised communities, and robust legislative measures to protect labour rights and combat caste-based discrimination, both within and beyond South Asia.
Ashok Danavath is a first-generation post-graduate Tribal scholar from Telangana and a former Government of India National Overseas Scholarship Fellow at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. Currently, working as a Senior Researcher for the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR).
Praveen Kolluguri is a first-generation learner and Bahujan human rights activist based in London, working on caste, labour, trade unions, neurodiversity, and disability justice issues. He is co-founder of the India Labour Solidarity Collective (UK).